Thats the first I ever heard about Ford Motor Company doing business with Hitler like that. I know both admired the other, at least in the early years. If any of you have any facts and figures to support your claims please post them.
GM and Ford, through their subsidiaries, controlled 70 percent of the German automobile market when war broke out in 1939. Those companies "rapidly retooled themselves to become suppliers of war material to the Germany army," writes Michael Dobbs in the Washington Post.
"When American GIs invaded Europe in June 1944, they did so in jeeps, trucks and tanks manufactured by the Big Three motor companies in one of the largest crash militarization programs ever undertaken," observes Dobbs. "It came as an unpleasant surprise to discover that the enemy was also driving trucks manufactured by Ford and Opel — a 100 percent GM-owned subsidiary — and flying Opel-built warplanes."
"The outbreak of war in September 1939 resulted inevitably in the full conversion by GM and Ford of their Axis plants to the production of military aircraft and trucks," according to a 1974 report printed by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. "On the ground, GM and Ford subsidiaries built nearly 90 percent of the armored ‘mule’ 3-ton half-trucks and more than 70 percent of the Reich’s medium and heavy-duty trucks. These vehicles, according to American intelligence reports, served as ‘the backbone of the German Army transportation system.’"
"General Motors was far more important to the Nazi war machine than Switzerland," says researcher Bradford Snell. "Switzerland was just a repository of looted funds, while GM was an integral part of the German war effort. The Nazis could have invaded Poland and Russia without Switzerland. They could not have done so without GM."
After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, GM Chairman Alfred P. Sloan commented that the Nazis’ behavior "should not be considered the business of the management of General Motors." The GM plant in Germany was highly profitable. "We have no right to shut down that plant," Sloan declared.
In 1946 General Electric stood accused of criminal conspiracy with Krupp, a major German munitions firm. Their partnership artificially raised the cost of U.S. defense preparations while helping to subsidize Hitler’s rearmament of Germany. The arrangement continued even after Nazi tanks smashed into Poland. Hitler was getting 12 pounds of tungsten carbide at the price the U.S. government was getting one pound. For every pound of the material sold in the U.S., Hitler through Krupp was getting royalties with which he bought more munitions. In 1940, with Europe at war, Krupp arranged to have its royalties from GE collected by a Swiss go-between. GE, its subsidiaries and company officials were found guilty on five counts of criminal conspiracy with Friederich Krupp A.G. of Essen, Germany.
In 1998 Ford spokesman John Spelich defended the company's decision to maintain business ties with Nazi Germany on the grounds that the U.S. government continued to have diplomatic relations with Berlin up until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
